{"id":2885,"date":"2011-02-21T09:08:02","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T09:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2011\/02\/if_in_doubt_cal\/"},"modified":"2011-02-21T09:08:02","modified_gmt":"2011-02-21T09:08:02","slug":"if_in_doubt_cal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/if_in_doubt_cal\/","title":{"rendered":"If In Doubt Call It “Real”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago, I wrote<\/a> about the lazy trope that had invaded television titling meaning that seemingly every factual programme was titled “The Real…”.
\nSince I wrote that piece, we’ve also had:
\nBattle of Britain: The Real Story
\nBritain’s Real Monarch
\nReal Wolf Kids
\nReal Crime
\nReal Housewives of New Jersey
\nReal Rescues
\nSAS – The Real Story
\nThe Real CSI
\nThe Real Da Vinci Code [sic]\nThe Real Goldfinger
\nThe Real Italian Job
\nThe Real Swiss Family Robinson
\nThe Real Vikings
\nThe Real Bonnie and Clyde
\nThe Real Spooks
\nAnd of course Dickinson’s Real Deal.
\nThere’s a pretty straightforward forumula in place. Take popular film\/TV series\/book\/subject to which you have no rights. Add the words “The Real..” to the front of it, and hey presto! You have a documentary title that in no way infringes anyone’s copyright, that catches the eye in newspaper listings or TV EPGs, and alerts viewers in the laziest manner possible.
\nI’m sure that some of those programmes were actually quite good. But I won’t watch anything called “The Real…” because you’re creatively bankrupt if you title your programme that way.<\/em> Sorry. But that’s the way it is.
\nI mention all this because of two “Reals” in the news. And neither is Madrid.
\nThe Sunday Mirror has alleged<\/a> that – shock horror – not everything on The Real Hustle is quite as “real” as it portrays.
\nAnd Channel 4 has been heavily promoting its latest “Real” programme: The Real King’s Speech. It ticks all the boxes, and in the week of the Oscars!
\nI’m sure that this is a carefully crafted film that was commissioned many months ago, and not huriedly rushed into production when it became obvious how big a hit a the film was. [Goes away and Googles…]\nNope. In fact it was shot at the start of this month<\/em><\/a>.
\n(Nobody says that fast-turnaround documentaries can’t<\/I> be good, but I do wonder if that’s the best way to make historical ones).
\n[Update] I see that Melvyn Bragg is making a major 20-part documentary entitled “The Reel History of Britain”. It’ll be history told through:
\narchive material (brilliant stuff from the BFI, the BBC and other independent documentary filmmakers such as Mitchell & Kenyon in the North West of England at the beginning of the last century) and, we hope, photographs, recollections, diary entries and maybe even film and video from people around the country, we will show the real history of Britain.<\/em>
\nI’m inclined to give this a pass since it’s essentially a double pun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the lazy trope that had invaded television titling meaning that seemingly every factual programme was titled “The Real…”. Since I wrote that piece, we’ve also had: Battle of Britain: The Real Story Britain’s Real Monarch Real Wolf Kids Real Crime Real Housewives of New Jersey Real Rescues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}